Favorite Colors
by SetsunaNoroi
Summary: When Yami Marik demands Ryou to guess his favorite color, the boy seems to think it's just a silly little game. But there is more to the yami's mind than Ryou sometimes gives him credit for. Though he's madness, sometimes even he has his reasons... as Ryou is about to find out. Rated T for implications of slight violence and mentioning of adult situations.


Yet another one shot with Ryou being a little darker than how I usually write him. After Bad Habits, I found I liked writing him with a bit more of a personality like his yami. Still kind and caring, but less innocent than most usually see him, including myself. Also, I'm a big Deathshipper, but I have never actually written anything for them. So it seemed like a good way to kill two birds with one stone.

That being said, Bad Habits doesn't have much to do with this story, but if you have not read it and like how I portray Ryou in this fic, I would say give it a shot. I don't think you will be disappointed.

And of course, as always, I do not own the rights to Yu-Gi-Oh! This is simply a tribute on my part to an anime/manga that I have a lot of love for. Please support the official releases of the books and episodes.

Also, this story has slight implications of abuse in a rough sexual nature. It is under consent, but if you find such things offensive, you may not wish to read this story.

Favorite Colors

"Guess my favorite color."

The random statement was not all that odd to Ryou's ears, and he didn't turn toward the speaker, instead continuing the chore he was currently working on. Sheets flared up in the air as he shook them out and hung them up, clipping them to the line outside the window of his apartment and humming a little. It was a little nonsense tune, with no words and no rhythm even, but he used it as an excuse not to answer right away.

"I said guess my-"

"I heard what you said, love," he replied, cutting off the tone. The person he was speaking to had sounded annoyed, but Ryou didn't allow temper tantrums in his home, at least when he had no use for them. Sometimes they could be rather fun, watching someone lose control of themselves, giving into rage and forgetting all about self-control, outward image, or even dignity.

A person was completely honest when they were angry, and Ryou, who had often found himself surrounded by old mysteries and lies for most of his life, reveled in that honesty he'd found with this person.

His shoulder was grabbed suddenly, and he was wheeled around to look into the face of a very incensed looking man. Tan skin so dark it looked as if the sun itself had tried to torment him with its rays, and blond hair so light it seemed it had received the same treatment, he looked like an ugly being right now, his face scrunched up in anger and deep purple eyes glaring at him.

"Mariku, I was just thinking about the answer," he assured him softly, and he offered the shadow of the tomb keeper's family, their greatest secret and nightmare, a soft smile. But he had a feeling it wasn't genuine enough to appease the man. He'd been thinking of more important things than favorite colors after all.

"My name is not-"

"I'm not calling you Marik," Ryou suddenly stated, his smile gone and his eyes cold. No, he would never give him that name, never compare this tiger-like beast to that self absorbed, selfish, spoiled, soft idiot. He would not see them as the same, never allow himself to think of them as one person.

"Mariku sounds stupid," the living nightmare replied, but he shrugged his shoulders. The argument, if it could be called that, was already over before it had even begun. They'd talked this over too many times to bother with going any further. Whether it was simply discussed or screamed out, it did not matter. It always went the same way, and the man dubbed Mariku had more pressing matters he wanted to talk about.

"So," he said as Ryou went back to the sheets. "Guess."

Ryou hummed again, but he was actually thinking it over this time.

Mariku was very odd and random. He always had been. There were times he could be angry and violent, and times when he was just childish. Those moments had been rare when he'd first met him, the madness and rage inside of him clouding up all other emotions, but over a time, a long and tedious time, Ryou'd found something underneath of it.

Mariku actually knew very little about the world, and was more socially inept than his creator. It was easy to hide of course when you were threatening to tear everything around you apart from limb to limb. Murder sort of overshadowed the fact you had no idea how to talk to people about reasonable things, but slowly Ryou was getting someone a little saner and a little less wild, though he doubted the progress would ever go far enough that Mariku would be considered normal.

"Let's see," he said as he stared down at the laundry before picking up a pillow case and inspecting it closely. He'd had to scrub this one for a good hour to get the blood stain out of it. Mariku had wanted to play particularly rough the night before, and while Ryou did trust him not to slice his throat open, he wasn't used to getting cut in the bedroom. They had all been shallow, barely even bleeding actually, but they'd made a little bit of a mess. He'd have to make sure if that happened again, the would be more careful so as not to make so much work next time. "Red, for blood."

Mariku gave a laugh that sounded like a dog barking before shaking his head.

"You think I'm that simple, really?" he asked.

"Sometimes you can act like it," he replied with a soft smile, assuring him silently that was not meant as an insult. Mariku was actually very complicated, but he could sometimes seem less so than what he really was. Ryou didn't mind. He felt it made the killer endearing.

As much as a killer could be endearing, anyway.

"So, not red," he mused, actually thinking a little harder on it. What would Mariku's favorite color be? This was such a simple thing, something children talked about, and he assumed the answer would be easy to guess. It wasn't going to be that predictable though, he could just tell. "Purple?"

Mariku snorted, apparently finding that answer as dumb as the first.

"No. Do you want a hint?" he asked.

"It seems that I do need one," the albino sighed softly and nodded. "Alrighty. Give me a hint."

"You're close to it."

Ryou arched his eyebrow at those words, not sure what he meant. Was his last guess close? Some variation of purple? But there were so many words for what was basically the same color. Why wasn't purple good enough of a guess?

"Uh... Lilac? Mauve? Violet?" he threw out, seeing his partner in the conversation shake his head each time, more and more insistently. "Oh, I can't think of anything else. What other purple shade could there be?"

"No, Ryou," Mariku said, and be damned if it didn't sound like he was whining. "You're physically close to it."

The boy blinked, looking down. He could have smacked himself, seeing the laundry full of clothing and material of various different colors. He should have figured being close was of a literally meaning. But there were so many different colors in the basket of the things he had washed, it wasn't much of a hint. He could be guessing for a while before he landed on it by dumb luck.

"I would have thought it would be obvious," Mariku stated evenly when Ryou didn't make another guess. "Isn't it?"

"I'm afraid you do have me stumped," he admitted, shrugging his shoulders. "Sorry. I can't seem to figure it out."

The tan boy sighed and shook his head and Ryou could clearly hear the exasperation in the noise. He supposed he should have tried harder to figure it out, but he had so little to go on. Before this conversation, he wouldn't have even figured he had a favorite color. It just didn't seem like something he would even think about, much less chose.

Finally he moved close to Ryou, stepping behind him and encircling his arms around him before teeth found their way to his neck. He winced at the sharp pressure, feeling the cold seeping of blood against his throat before the monster holding him firm started to lap it up, as if he were some animal or vampire from an ancient legend.

"Do you enjoy hurting me?" Ryou asked, arching an eyebrow. Was this his punishment for not winning the guessing game of colors? It was actually fairly tame, considering what Mariku could do.

"Yes," a voice breathed into his ear. "But I enjoy hurting everything. You most of all. And ironically, that has to do with my favorite color. You."

"I'm not really a color," he explained before it hit him. It was simple and subtle, but it certainly had fooled him. He suddenly laughed, unable to believe he hadn't gotten it before now. "Your favorite color is white?"

"Bingo. Took you long enough."

"Mmmm, I am very pale, and my hair is hardly natural," he stated. "I guess I am pretty close to that color after all. I'm sorry. I should have figured that out."

"Maybe you don't know me well enough then," Mariku growled softly.

"I don't think it's easy to know you, but I'm certainly the one who knows you best," Ryou reasoned.

"Well, you'll just have to try to learn even more until I'm satisfied it's enough," he challenged in a hiss before biting him. Ryou dropped the pillow case and mewled softly, titling his head back onto the broad chest behind him. "I have laundry to do, you know."

"I love white," Mariku whispered in his ear, his tongue and lips playing with his flesh now as he talked, clearly not giving a damn about the laundry. "It's blank, pure, innocent. You can do whatever you want with it, taint it with other colors. But then it's no longer white. It's just a mess, and it ends the fun. But you... you always go back to being white after a few days, and I can taint you all over again."

Ryou felt this reasoning was the stupidest and yet hottest thing in the world. He was hardly innocent, he hadn't been for a very long time, but Mariku was clearly leading to one thing, and Ryou wasn't the type to ever turn him down. He never wanted to.

The laundry lay forgotten, and as he was pulled eagerly to the bedroom, he supposed there were certain benefits to having a sadistic killer in his home. At the very least, it never got boring, and he was never unsatisfied anymore.

Mariku was wild, dangerous, and unpredictable. Ryou could trust him not to kill him, because it would be boring for Mariku afterward, but anything else was open to happen. Ryou provided him a toy, himself, to play with and get his urges out on and kept him entertained. He never had reason to fear for his life, knowing deep down it would be better for the living nightmare to keep his charitable host alive instead of indulging in the few moments of bliss it would give him to kill the boy. After all, no one else would be willing to house the monster, and Ryou found himself enjoying it more than he thought he would, learning more about him as time went on, even if picking up on certain things were harder on his mind and body than others.

It was a fun experiment, one way or the other, and perfect for him to get back at Marik.

Marik, the pathetic coward who liked to pretend himself tortured to the point where he believed no one else's problems compared or even existed. Marik, who had found Ryou's own yami twisted and hateful but attractive, simply for challenge's sake. Marik... the bastard who had used his body like a toy just to prove no one was immune to his charm, even if they were a spirit who had been dead for thousands of years.

And of course, his damn yami had gone along with it, simply to make that spoiled brat shut up and leave him alone.

Maybe it had been petty to bring Marik's yami back, despite the fear in Marik of his own shadow. No one thought it like Ryou to go for revenge, but he'd learned a few tricks about Shadow Magic on his own after his years possessed by his own monster, and he hadn't felt the least bit guilty on bringing back everyone's worst nightmare. In fact, he'd enjoyed it, and the agony he knew he'd inflicted on Marik, knowing his yami was around and could go after him any moment. It was more than worth any tantrum the monster might throw or weird game he came up with.

Who would have thought he could have actually tamed this wild thing though? He had never intended to let him actually go out anywhere. He wanted to scare Marik, not be responsible for his murder. Encasing the maniac in his home had been hard at times, keeping him calm when all he wished to do was stab everyone who had ever slighted him. Who would have ever figured said maniac would be demanding him to guess such a thing as his favorite color, as if he were some child?

But then, would would have figured Mariku would do anything he did?

Of course, Ryou did sometimes have to remind himself that this being born of Shadow Magic, hatred and resentment actually was just less than a decade old. It had factored in more than he would have figured. He was certainly no innocent by any means, the way he forced Ryou to twist and scream in his bed was proof of that alone, but there was still a part of him that clearly needed the companionship once he'd learned how nice it could be.

The fact he'd wanted Ryou to figure out his favorite color, that he'd wanted Ryou to know and had expressed in his own way the affection he had for his host was enough to make it all worth it.

And as Ryou lay in his own bed, too exhausted to move as Mariku slept by his side, he supposed he learned a little bit about himself along the way. He'd hated his yami for doing those horrible things to him, claiming he cared then caring little how he hurt him or belittled him. Ryou was happy he was gone, and hopeful that he'd finally done the decent thing and died. However, he'd also found it had left him feeling a little lonely. He would never want the spirit back, but having someone there, someone dark and cruel to the world, but caring to him... well, maybe he wasn't as innocent as everyone thought.

He'd gotten used to that presence there, but he had to admit Mariku filled it much, much better.

Though of course, there were the little things he'd learned too, sometimes even on accident. As he trailed a finger over his hip, already forming an ugly bruise where his lover had gripped him too hard as he took him brutally from behind, he realized white was in fact rather pretty, and was easy to write over with something else.

His skin would go back to normal soon enough, and the monster would decorate him with more cuts and bruises that just came from being with someone that had little to no control. It wasn't vindictive like the scars he had earned from his own yami, more given to him out of a need to be close and touch completely rather than out of a desire to control through terror and pain. Mariku was wild, but he was infinitely better than the monster in perfect control of itself, every ounce of pain it had given calculated to hurt as much as it could.

No, the bruises would fade and Ryou would go back to being white and uncolored, waiting simply for Mariku to get the urge to play again. But it seemed almost a shame to him, though it had only hit him now. It would always fade. Mariku would never go far enough to hurt him in a lasting manner, wishing him to never be scarred. He liked Ryou looking untouched, he'd learned that now.

But it was still a shame, because as he trailed a finger over his mark, the ugly purple riding up on his pale skin, he realized he almost liked how it looked.

After all, purple was now his favorite color.

End

Suppose that's all. Hope you liked it, and please review.


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